Air Force dumped remains of 274 troops in landfill

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Report: Air Force dumped remains of 274 troops in landfill

Steve Ruark / AP file

An Army carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of a soldier on Oct. 15, 2011 at Dover Air Force Base, Del.
By msnbc.com staff

The incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops were dumped in a Virginia landfill, according to government records, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Air Force officials said that the dumping was hidden from families who had given authorization for the remains to be disposed of in a respectful and dignified manner, according to the newspaper.

There were no plans to inform families, officials told the newspaper.

New information revealed that the practice, exposed by The Washington Post in November, had become very widespread until it was halted in 2008, the newspaper reported.

Last month, Pentagon and Air Force officials said that figuring out how many remains were sent to the King George County, Va., landfill would take combing through the records of more than 6,300 troops.

Air Force morgue lost body parts from war dead

"It would require a massive effort and time to recall records and research individually," Jo Ann Rooney, the Pentagon's acting undersecretary for personnel, said in a Nov. 22 letter to Rep. Rush Holt (Dem.-N.J.), who has pressured the Pentagon for information on the issue on behalf of one of his constituents, according to the newspaper.

Holt reacted angrily to the news, the newspaper reported.

"What the hell?" he told the Post. "We spent millions, tens of millions, to find any trace of soldiers killed, and they're concerned about a 'massive' effort to go back and pull out the files and find out how many soldiers were disrespected this way?"

"They just don't want to ask questions or look very hard," he added, according to the newspaper.

Video: Panetta orders review of Dover morgue

According to records the military gave The Post, between 2003 and 2008, 976 fragments from 274 personnel were cremated, incinerated and dumped in the landfill. An additional 1,762 remains, which could not be DNA tested because of damage from explosions, were gathered from the battlefield and dumped in a similar manner, the Air Force told the newspaper.

The widow of an Army sergeant killed in Iraq told the newspaper she was furious when a morgue she was told how some of her husband's remains were dumped in the landfill.

"They have known that they were doing something disgusting, and they were doing everything they could to keep it from us," Gari-Lynn Smith told the newspaper. She had been pressing the military for information on the subject for four years — ever since she got a report on her husband's autopsy and learned that some of the remains had not been put in the casket for his funeral, according to The Post.
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Changes in disposal policies came about after an in-depth review at Dover was ordered in 2008 by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

How the hell did they go along with this?

[Thanas]

Supporting the troops, I see.

Disgusting.

[Shroom Man 777]

Are these like whole soldier bodies being incinerated? Or like severed limbs and bits of human meat blown up?

Because in the hospital, the body parts removed from patients and sent for biopsy - such as removed limbs, uteruses and breasts infested with cancers, eyeballs, liposuctioned fat, etc. - are usually also disposed of in the typical method of biohazardous materials, through incineration.

Like where my mom works, all these body parts in jars full of preservatives just stacking in their work place, eventually the oldest ones will be disposed off by the sanitation staff. They can't have closets full of bottled arms and legs. And, it's not like you're going to give a woman who had a hysterectomy her own pickled uterus for her to keep as a souvenir (and take with her when she dies and gets buried). So, eventually, they're taken to the incinerator.

[Broomstick]

Are these like whole soldier bodies being incinerated? Or like severed limbs and bits of human meat blown up?

Probably some of both.

And, it's not like you're going to give a woman who had a hysterectomy her own pickled uterus for her to keep as a souvenir (and take with her when she dies and gets buried). So, eventually, they're taken to the incinerator.

Actually, some people really do this. In the US, it is possible that if you, say, have a limb amputated you could have it cremated and the remains given to you in a little urn to be buried with you later. I think it's even possible to have a preserved bit to take home with you - "pickled uterus" in other words. Needless to say, only a minority of people do this, but it does happen.

[Simon_Jester]

I have a sneaking suspicion that when the next of kin signed those disposal forms, they didn't understand, didn't ask about, and weren't told the full implications. I suspect some of them wouldn't have wanted to know, because the question boils down to:

"We found your son in four separate pieces. Do you want the closed casket to contain four separate bags, or shall we put the big one in the casket and dispose of the other three?"

Not a happy, or tasteful, question to answer.

[Keevan_Colton]

One thing with the incinerator stuff, that's essentially what happens with cremations...though generally people either keep the ashes or scatter them somewhere with a small ceremony of some kind. One common way of scattering them has been from boats as a sort of burial at sea thing...shame the military doesnt have access to any ships or stuff...

[Simon_Jester]

Keevan, please read more closely.

Reading between the lines of the article and knowing a bit about how injuries on the battlefield can be, it looks like (in most cases) these are not complete bodies being burned, at least not in the great majority of cases. These are bits of bodies- arms or legs that were physically blasted off by explosions or amputated in a medical context, and so forth.

Thus, it's quite possible to have a situation like the one described in the article:

The widow of an Army sergeant killed in Iraq told the newspaper she was furious when a morgue she was told how some of her husband's remains were dumped in the landfill.

"They have known that they were doing something disgusting, and they were doing everything they could to keep it from us," Gari-Lynn Smith told the newspaper. She had been pressing the military for information on the subject for four years — ever since she got a report on her husband's autopsy and learned that some of the remains had not been put in the casket for his funeral, according to The Post.

According to records the military gave The Post, between 2003 and 2008, 976 fragments from 274 personnel were cremated, incinerated and dumped in the landfill. An additional 1,762 remains, which could not be DNA tested because of damage from explosions...

(emphasis added)

You don't get 976 pieces of 274 bodies without some serious damage. The same goes for fragments which "could not be DNA tested because of damage from explosiions."

If we go digging through the paperwork, I predict that we'll find that all or nearly all of these soldiers had perfectly normal military funeral rites, but that pieces of their bodies which were blown away or found later (say, when someone's going over the wreckage of a bombed-out Humvee) were disposed of separately.

Now, am I happy about this? No- see my opinions in the thread in Off-Topic about crematoriums that use the heat from cremations to run turbines. But it's not a sign of some gross military callousness, this is not all that far outside the normal practices any medical institution has about disposing of detached bits of human flesh.

The worst you can say is that the military didn't delay the funerals until all the bits of the deceased could be gathered up, and that they didn't hold some kind of weird separate funeral rite for bits and pieces of dead soldiers before dumping them in the sea or whatever.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah... while I can understand the desire to have all the bits of your deceased loved one in the box you put into the ground, they aren't just going to join back together and bring him back to life. In a sense, it's like burying a body that had its organs harvested for donation.

The biggest error the military committed here was not telling people what they were doing. If they'd had a simple note on the bottom of some of the documents saying something along the lines of, "The body we return to you is in a fragmentary condition due to nature of death, we have striven to restore every identifiable component of his/her body but we cannot guarantee that we have recovered every part that was removed from the corpse," I think there'd be much less of a flap about this.

Of course, you have the counterpoint to doing that-- do you really want to rub grieving relatives or spouses' faces in the fact that Private Joe was blown to flinders? Why not just give them his body and if you happen to find bits of Joe after you've already done that, well, do they really need to know...?

[Keevan_Colton]

The issue here is more to do with the difference between being told the remains will be disposed of in a "respectful and dignified" manner and then dumping them in a landfill like household rubbish. It isnt one of incomplete bodies or that, it's the fact that the families signed off on disposal based on one thing, only to discover that it's pretty much as far removed from that as it's possible to get short of flushing them down the toilet.

[Todeswind]

I'm not really sure how someone even can give a proper burial to the various in sundry bits of offal and bones left over after an IED explosion that fly off into the distance and aren't readily identifiable as belonging to person A or B. Do we give separate burials to every finger and eyeball we find?

I am somewhat shocked that they aren't simply burning remains of this sort the way they do in hospitals and the like. I have difficulty in believing the US military doesn't have something on hand that can cremate human remains in a pinch.

[Broomstick]

Please read the fucking article and thread, Todeswind - we ARE talking about cremated remains!

Cremation does not equal vaporization, m'kay? In fact, I have a small jar of what's left of my mother sitting in the very room where I'm typing this. The issue is not so much cremation as what was done to the ashes afterward.

Throwing human ashes in a landfill is seen as disrespectful, nevermind if it's considered acceptable for "medical waste" from a civilian hospital.

Seems to me, a better solution would be for a place to be set up at a military cemetery (or rather, at several) where unidentified bits can be interred, probably in ash form. It would, in a sense, be a mass grave but I think the grieving relatives would rather have that, where they can go and think maybe the unretrieved bits of Bobby or Tommy wound up there, than think of their loved ones in the county dump.

[MKSheppard]

Are these like whole soldier bodies being incinerated? Or like severed limbs and bits of human meat blown up?

Been following this in the COMPOST for the last few weeks.

Here's a case example. Sergeant SHROOMANTSKY is blown up by an IED in his DOOMVEE.

The heat of the explosion etc is so intense that it fuses the bones in his right arm together, so it sticks out at an odd bizarre angle.

The USAF Corpse people at Dover AFB, in order to get SGT SHROOMANTSKY ready for an open coffin funeral, saw that fused arm off. The fused arm gets incinerated and dumped in a landfill.

[Todeswind]

Please read the fucking article and thread, Todeswind - we ARE talking about cremated remains!

Cremation does not equal vaporization, m'kay? In fact, I have a small jar of what's left of my mother sitting in the very room where I'm typing this. The issue is not so much cremation as what was done to the ashes afterward.

Ugh... yeah I'm an idiot... I skimmed the article this morning when I was half asleep. I'm aware of how cremation works, I though they were buying the human body prior to cremation parts for some reason. My bad. Sorry.

Throwing human ashes in a landfill is seen as disrespectful, nevermind if it's considered acceptable for "medical waste" from a civilian hospital.

Actually what do they do with the human ashes from medical waste sites? I never thought to ask. Is there a special funeral plot or something?

Seems to me, a better solution would be for a place to be set up at a military cemetery (or rather, at several) where unidentified bits can be interred, probably in ash form. It would, in a sense, be a mass grave but I think the grieving relatives would rather have that, where they can go and think maybe the unretrieved bits of Bobby or Tommy wound up there, than think of their loved ones in the county dump.

I agree.

[Broomstick]

Throwing human ashes in a landfill is seen as disrespectful, nevermind if it's considered acceptable for "medical waste" from a civilian hospital.

Actually what do they do with the human ashes from medical waste sites? I never thought to ask. Is there a special funeral plot or something?

As with so many other things in the US, it can vary from place to place. Among the alternatives I am aware of:

1) Return of ashes to the family (for people donating their bodies to science/medicine)

2) Return of ashes to the original owner (usually involving an amputation of a limb)

3) Return of preserved part to the original owner (again, usually an amputation - you can request to have your detached part embalmed. It will be preserved and given to you in a sealed container, i.e. "limb casket", usually to be interred with the rest of you when you're entirely dead.)

4) Keeping of part or tissue for education purposes (occasionally, an entire body - the Museum of Science and Industry have two people carved into slices that were originally used to educate doctors and are now a museum exhibit for the public)

5) Cremation of bodies (usually "John Does", unidentified deceased people) and subsequent internment in "potter's ground" or poor persons' graves

6) Burial of entire bodies in potter's ground (less common these days, especially in urban areas that are getting crowded). May or may not be embalmed, but more commonly embalmed post Civil War

7) Cremation of "biological waste" and transport to landfills - but that's usually seen as acceptable ONLY for tissue and parts, such as blood from surgical operations and small fragments, removed appendixes, bone fragments, removed gall bladders (though some people like to keep their gallstones in a jar), etc. may extend up to amputated limbs but is not the majority of the person and, indeed, the person may well be alive and recover. It is not seen as acceptable for entire bodies or the larger portion of deceased people.

In current US culture, when possible it is seen as desirable to get as much of a dead person into the casket (or urn, if cremated) as possible. When the body is fragmented, the family is usually informed of subsequent discovery of more parts and asked about how they should be handled. As an example, relatives of people who died in the WTC collapses are occasionally informed that additional bits have been identified. This can be distressing. Some families want every single part, even going so far as to repeatedly re-open graves so as to bury as many parts in one location as possible. Others say they no longer want to be informed of newly identified bits and leave disposal to the NY authorities, which potentially could include a trip to a landfill. It is important to note, however, that in that case the families are given a choice - in the recent scandal there was no choice, no informing of families, and so forth. Basically human remains were treated as garbage. That, more than anything, is what was unacceptable.

[Todeswind]

Ok, thank you for the information.

As a side note I actually am an American, though the vast majority of my life has been spent as an expatriate.

[Shroom Man 777]

Actually, some people really do this. In the US, it is possible that if you, say, have a limb amputated you could have it cremated and the remains given to you in a little urn to be buried with you later. I think it's even possible to have a preserved bit to take home with you - "pickled uterus" in other words. Needless to say, only a minority of people do this, but it does happen.

Funny story. Some people asked my mom to like, keep/not-throw the pickled foot of this person, because the pickled foot was stored in the work place, right? And they wanted to get the pickled foot of the person later, in the eventuality that person dies, to bury the foot-pickle together with the dead person. My mom said okay.

And then hospital regulations changed, and then their backlog of pickled human remains had to be cleared because there was a whole bunch of them, and so the sanitation people took away that particular pickled foot - along with the pickled uteruses, pickled fats, pickled appendixes, pickled gallbladders, etc. - and I guess they incinerated it.

Well, mom apparently told the family what happened and there wasn't much they could do about it I guess.


Maybe they should create a unit, or a new kind of procedure, to deal specifically with retrieving the piecemeal pieces of dead soldiers and undertake the proper methods of disposing of their people-parts. Or do they already have this? I guess this isn't one of those things you'd think about when you go to war. "Do we have enough bombs? Check. Do we have enough guns? Check. Do we have enough armor? Check. Do we have enough people/resources/whatever so we can properly scrape the exploderized remains of our brave boys from their Doomvees, tag them and bag them, and send them back to their weeping families in a ziplock bag? Uhh...."

I would love to know more about the intricacies of military mortuary services. It sounds very interesting. Do they outsource this to private companies? Or what?

Been following this in the COMPOST for the last few weeks.

Here's a case example. Sergeant SHROOMANTSKY is blown up by an IED in his DOOMVEE.

The heat of the explosion etc is so intense that it fuses the bones in his right arm together, so it sticks out at an odd bizarre angle.

The USAF Corpse people at Dover AFB, in order to get SGT SHROOMANTSKY ready for an open coffin funeral, saw that fused arm off. The fused arm gets incinerated and dumped in a landfill.

Can you graph me, Shep? This sounds like an awesome aspect of the US military's comprehensive logistical train. I want to know more about this.

I always wanted to work in a funeral home. I wonder how different the military does these things compared to their civilian counterparts.